Cotton harvesting and loading

Mungindi
Border town spreading from New South Wales across to Queensland.
Mungindi (pronounced 'mung-in-die') is truly a border town. Half of it is in NSW and half in Queensland. As NSW utilises daylight savings and Queensland does not, this creates the unusual situation where the one town is located within different time zones in the summer.

Mungindi is a small rural town of some 650 people, located 748 km north-west of Sydney and 120 km north-west of Moree on the road to St George in Queensland. It is essentially a service centre to a rich agricultural district which principally produces cotton, wheat and beef cattle. The Barwon River flows through the middle of the town, making it a popular district for anglers.

The town's name derives from the language of the Kamilaroi people who inhabited the area before white settlement. It is thought to mean 'water hole by the river'.

Escaped convict George Clarke (see entry on Boggabri) traversed the district with the Kamilaroi people in the years 1826-1831. Upon his recapture he told of a vast inland river called the Kindur which prompted the acting governor to send Sir Thomas Mitchell to investigate the claims. Mitchell encountered the Barwon River in 1832, a little south of present-day Mungindi. It was Mitchell's favourable report on the pastoral prospects of the area which prompted squatters to fan out in the 1830s (1) heading north from the Hunter Valley along the Namoi then west along the Gwydir River to the Barwon and (2) north from Bathurst and Mudgee along the Macquarie and Castlereagh Rivers, with the first settlement on the Barwon occurring between 1839 and 1842.

The town was laid out in 1880 by surveyor Robert Matthews who did some interesting early ethnographic research relating to the indigenous people of Australia.

There is an annual show held at the end of May and a race meeting on the first Saturday in July. The Two Mile Pub is an old inn of local fame which is indeed two miles out of town, on the Queensland side of the border.

Things to see:  

Cotton Gins
There are two large cotton gins near the town which are happy to take visitors through the complex. Ring the Moree Visitors' Centre for more information, tel: (02) 6752 7479.

	Hotels
	Jolly Swagman Hotel/Motel St George St Mungindi NSW 2406 Telephone: (02) 6753 2022
	Racecourse Hotel Carnarvon Hwy Mungindi NSW 2406 Telephone: (02) 6753 2051
	Two Mile Hotel Carnarvon Hwy Mungindi NSW 2406 Telephone: (02) 6753 2051
	Restaurants
	Jolly Swagman Hotel/Motel St George St Mungindi NSW 2406 Telephone: (02) 6753 2022
	RSL Restaurant St George St Mungindi NSW 2406 Telephone: (02) 6753 2396